


I am Small and the World is Big

by lloydsglasses



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Depression, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Modern Era, One-sided Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Trans Character, Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lloydsglasses/pseuds/lloydsglasses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once the whole business is over and done with, Bilbo returns to England.</p><p>Bag End is quiet, and in his heart Bilbo wonders if returning was truly the right choice after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I am Small and the World is Big

**Author's Note:**

> Tags and warnings to be added every chapter as appropriate.
> 
> Chapter warnings: depression, referenced misgendering.

Once the whole business is over and done with, Bilbo returns to England.

Hobbiton is much the same, though perhaps quieter than he remembers. Or maybe it’s just that Bilbo has grown too familiar with the hustle and bustle of cities, and too accustomed to the noise that a company of fourteen tends to make.

Whatever the case, Bag End is quiet. In his heart Bilbo wonders if returning here was truly the right choice after all.

\--

He receives no less than fifty callers during his first week back, and he opens the door to less than half of them. Holman Greenhand is welcomed in of course, as are his favourite Took relatives, though they ask more questions about his ‘adventures’ than Bilbo really feels like answering. Lobelia Sackville-Baggins shows up on his fourth day back and he pretends he’s not home, even though she stands outside for a whole fifteen minutes and shouts through his letterbox. She calls his phone three times later that afternoon, but Bilbo doesn’t pick up and deletes all her voice messages – he’s not prepared to give Lobelia the time of day when she still insists upon calling him ‘she’. All the same, ignoring her takes a lot of energy out of him, and he ends up having his groceries for the week delivered to his door rather than risk running into her at the supermarket.

It’s easy, Bilbo realises after that first week, to simply have things delivered to his door. He doesn’t need to get dressed this way, and it means he can spend more time searching for jobs (or playing facebook games, if he’s honest with himself, but it’s hardly his fault that job hunting is boring). He mostly buys things like oven pizza, or pie and chips these days anyway, because heating frozen food is just so much easier than _actual_ cooking.

So Bilbo orders the shopping from his bed and by the time it arrives he’s usually still in pyjamas. He can’t find it in himself to be embarrassed about that.

\--

A few weeks go by and it doesn’t take long to sink into a numbing routine of facebook games and TV. He thinks this might be the most use he’s ever got out of his television, because he normally gets bored after watching it for too long, but there’s very little else to do. In his own mind he can accept that it’s not a very good substitute for his camera, but that sits untouched on the desk in his study and he has no plans to pick it up – it’s not like he really has anything to take photographs of nowadays.

His plates and utensils go unwashed next to the sink – because what’s the point in washing them when he’s only going to make them dirty again in a few hours? – and his shelves become dusty. Every so often he thinks about cleaning, but it’s not like he really gets many visitors these days so there’s probably no need. He occasionally plucks books off the shelves with the intention of reading them, but he’s mostly too restless to really focus on the story and ends up going back to the TV.

He goes back to the TV at night too; at the very least, it’s more bearable than lying awake and trying not to think about Erebor.

\--

To his own surprise, Bilbo is offered a job at an office in Cirencester, not twenty minutes from his house by bus. The commute is easy and the pay is good, but the work is dull and repetitive. Bilbo spends too much time staring out the window, and often wonders whether he ought not to have taken the first job that he was offered.

His colleagues are nice, in the way that colleagues usually are; supportive and welcoming, but all with their own lives and priorities. They’re none of them very motivated, and the constant buzz of office chatter revolves around family life, whatever was on the telly last night, and occasional gossip about other co-workers. Bilbo very carefully does not say anything about being transgender – this is the countryside after all, not Erebor.

He learns to filter out anecdotes about husbands, wives and children, to feign an interest in small talk about trashy books and TV shows, to laugh and smile in all the right places when the men talk about women they wouldn’t kick out of bed and clearly expect him to be in on it. His colleagues invite him out for drinks on Fridays and he always says no, letting them think that he’s busy when he’s probably just going to spend the evening watching television. They’re dull, and Bilbo hates himself for thinking it, and he hates himself even more because he’s just as dull as them.

But it’s a job and it’s better than doing nothing, and he has to pay the bills somehow.

\--

There comes an evening when Bilbo has to stay late at work, and by the time he’s done it’s long past when he usually eats dinner. He’s too hungry to really wait until he gets home, so he heads into town in the hopes of finding some food at the Christmas market. It’s very busy – of course it is, there’s only one week until Christmas – and before long Bilbo finds himself caught in the middle of a crowd. They’re all much taller than him, and all heading in different directions and by all rights Bilbo should find it unpleasant but he… doesn’t.

He isn’t sure what makes him do it but abruptly Bilbo stops moving and closes his eyes. It’s noisy; there is a cheerful hum of chatter on the street around him and he can hear ostentatious carousel music coming from somewhere close by, along with boisterous laughter from the German beer stall to his right. He lets himself be jostled lightly as people pass by and though his heart thuds a deep, excited rhythm in his chest, his feet remain stay to the ground and his eyes remain shut tight.

Bilbo draws in a deep breath. He hasn’t felt this alive in months.

\--

He returns to the market every day that week, sits for hours in the middle of it and loses himself amongst the people and the noise. It’s exhilarating, and he can’t stop himself from thinking about how much more exhilarating it could be if he were somewhere bigger than Cirencester. Bilbo finds his mind wandering to fireworks by the Thames on New Year’s Eve, and he wonders how it would feel to be nameless in a crowd of thousands.

Christmas Day comes and he spends it on his own in Bag End, and he eats oven pizza and watches television. But he also books five nights in a hotel in London and feels quietly excited about it.

**Author's Note:**

> So this is basically my take on a wanderer Bilbo AU but in a modern setting, sort of? In that way it's partly inspired by [The Road goes ever on and on](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5412050/chapters/12504356) by paranoid_fridge, which is a really wonderful fic that you should definitely go read if you haven't already!
> 
> But this is also really self-indulgent because it's kind of inspired by my own life - I've had a massive writing block for months and I'm hoping that writing about how I'm feeling and what I'm doing might help me break it, and also help me work through some of the stuff that I'm feeling right now. So yeah, expect chapters to probably be fairly short and updates to be completely irregular!
> 
> Come say hi on [tumblr,](http://lloydsglasses.tumblr.com) if you like. :)


End file.
